Robyn Urback: Math isn't hard. Teaching it is

The process of understanding mathematical concepts is fundamentally different from learning about Canada’s Confederation. There’s a click — a light bulb moment, if you will — that has to occur for the student to “get” why 3x(9-4) = 15, not 23.

Anyone can tell a room of primary students that Canada became a country in 1867. It doesn’t matter how they say it; the message will get through. Not everyone can explain to a group of children, of whom many will struggle with abstract concepts, why subtraction comes before multiplication for this math problem, but not for others. The task is especially challenging when the teachers themselves don’t have a particularly strong grasp of mathematical principles. Or, just as bad, have a strong grasp of the concepts, but cannot communicate them effectively or are strangled by curriculum requirements.

That may be one of the reasons why Canada’s international ranking on math education has fallen this year, as reported by the OECD Program for International Student Assessment. The survey, which is done every three years, placed Canada as 13th out of 65 countries in math, down three spots from 2009 and six spots from 2006.

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But the usefulness of comparing international math scores is limited; performance gaps within countries, income variants, attitudes toward competition and curriculum flexibility all affect national standings. Figuring out what Canada can do to one-up Japan involves much more than tweaking the Grade 10 curriculum.

That said, we really don’t need to look beyond Canada’s borders to see that national math scores have been dropping over the past several years. University professors across the county have complained that first-year students arrive thoroughly unprepared for higher-level math, and some instructors have been forced to teach (or re-teach) high school basics. Provincial test scores in Ontario have been dropping consistently over the past five years, with the latest round of standardized tests showing that just 57% of Grade 6 students are meeting provincial standards in math, down from 63% a few years ago. And Ontario students are among the country’s better performers; students in Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island are performing much worse.

Manitoba in 2008 formally adopted one of the most radical math curriculum overhauls, which turned out to be an abysmal failure and has since been scaled back

So what’s going on? Is it possible that kids in Canada — frankly speaking — are just dumber than they once were when it comes to math?

Well, no. It’s not. Ask any veteran teacher who has taught the same grade for decades, and she’ll tell you that children generally don’t change. Parents, administrators and the curriculum might, but an eight-year-old today is not fundamentally different from an eight-year-old from 10 years ago. That means that if the latter is capable of doing long division, so too is the former.

The problem is twofold. For one, straight long division isn’t on the curriculum anymore; at least not as it once was. The old ways of learning — rote strategies and “math facts” — have been replaced by so-called “discovery math” and “inquiry-based” teaching methods that focus on word problems, strategies and estimations. Manitoba in 2008 formally adopted one of the most radical math curriculum overhauls, which turned out to be an abysmal failure and has since been scaled back. Other provinces have moved forward with discovery math programs under the Western and Northern Canadian Protocol (WNCP), which was launched in 1995 and updated in 2006. And parents, never mind children, are having trouble understanding the new concepts.

Students who struggle with math are nevertheless given partial marks for effort and sent off to the next grade, where they are presumably expected to build upon principles that were never properly mastered. The problem is thus compounded.

The math curriculum in Quebec is more reflective of older rote styles of learning, as opposed to the discovery math touted in other provinces

The other issue lies with who is teaching this new discovery math, particularly at the primary level. The majority of new grads coming out of teachers college who intend to work in the primary school system come from humanities backgrounds, and many haven’t taken a formal math class since Grade 11. Many are rusty on the concepts or uncomfortable with the subject, as a professor at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education told a local paper. Professor Mary Reid said that many student teachers were anxious when given a Grade 6 math test, and some struggled to remember basic mathematical concepts.

The provincial outlier in the OECD report was Quebec, where would-be educators have to actually learn math as part of their training. The math curriculum in Quebec is also more reflective of older rote styles of learning, as opposed to the discovery math touted in other provinces. Not surprisingly, Quebec students performed heads above students from the rest of Canada. There’s an obvious lesson there.

Math isn’t hard, but teaching it is. A teacher without a firm grasp of mathematical principles, as well as the tools to explain them, shouldn’t be the one explaining BEDMAS to the class. We need to get back to proven methods — back to basics — and leave the discovery to history and English.